In response to the passage of the GOP tax bill, many voices are now offering variations on the theme of "speak truth to power." It's true enough that tax overhaul, coming after 30 years of widening inequality, widens it further. It is likewise yet another exercise in trickle-down economics, the policy promise that direct economic help to corporations and the rich will eventually lift up the rest of us. The GOP and Trump conveniently disregard the countless economists who have shown that trickle-down is a false promise.

Once more with feeling, the old debate rises into the headlines and the talk show circuit: Should governments -- state, federal or local -- raise the minimum wage or not? Employers of minimum-wage workers weigh in to say "no." But that raises a PR problem: It looks bad to advocate keeping...

Capitalism as a system is now increasingly challenged. Critics proliferate and steadily deepen their opposition (alongside, of course, the persistence of capitalism's defenders). Yet capitalism's traditional "other" -- namely, socialism -- has also been widely devalued. It has lost its position as the goal (however variously interpreted) for anti-capitalist social movements. When not simply ignored, socialism...

Over the last century, capitalism has repeatedly revealed its worst tendencies: instability and inequality. Instances of instability include the Great Depression (1929-1941) and the Great Recession since 2008, plus eleven "downturns" in the US between those two global collapses. Each time, millions lost jobs, misery soared, poverty worsened and massive resources were wasted. Leaders promised...

Once again, private capitalism's contradictions, flaws and weaknesses threaten its own existence. Two major global collapses -- first in the 1930s and more recently, since 2008 -- plus periodic downturns every few years have underscored the instability that haunts the system. At the same time, deepening inequality has

Capitalism has a long, ugly history of scapegoating immigrants. The pattern has been repeated often. For example, British capitalism's drive to empire helped force the Irish, as colonial subjects, to emigrate. Miserable colonial conditions, including horrific famines, drove many Irish to labor for capitalists in England at wages lower than English workers had won. English workers raged against and...

Like much else in economies, finance both enhances the economy's growth and development and undermines it. The balance between these contradictory effects depends on all the other aspects of an economy and society and how they all influence financial contradictions. From its first entrance into the economy -- that part of society concerned with the production and...

As global capitalism staggers painfully, unevenly and dangerously in the wake of its 2008 collapse, its critics divide into two broad camps. One commits to fixing or reforming a capitalism that has somehow lost its way. The other finds capitalism irreparably...

Mark Karlin: Let's start with the a statement from the preface of your book: "Questioning the capitalist system, let alone discussing system change, simply does not occur to mainstream academics and the journalists and politicians they trained. Such discourses are repressed." How is an open public discussion of capitalism stifled?